Being Vegan is slowly becoming more mainstream. If you are new to this lifestyle choice and want to try converting some of your favorite recipes to Vegan, here is a list of some substitutes you can easily make to adjust your recipes.

Milk: It is easy to substitute cow’s milk in any recipe. Use any nut milk, soy milk, rice milk, coconut or hemp milk in equal substitute amounts. For buttermilk, add 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to your plant-based milk in the amount needed.

Cheese: So many choices out there. For vegan cheese lovers, Soy cheese melts, spreads and tastes like the real thing, without all the saturated fat! Nutritional yeast is another great choice!

Eggs: There are several vegan egg replacements. Tofu is quite often used when making a scrambled egg dish. When baking, you can use mashed bananas, applesauce, Ener-G egg replacer, a flax egg (1 tablespoon ground flax seeds plus 3 tablespoons water or other liquid), or soft tofu.

Butter: Vegan margarines are available in most grocery stores. You can also use sunflower, olive or even coconut oil. For breakfast, toast with mashed avocado is amazing.

Beef and chicken stock: You can easily sub vegetable or mushroom stock or even water for most recipes.

Meat: There are tons of meat substitutes on the market today. In recipes you can use tofu, Seitan, Tempeh, TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein – it tastes better than it sounds) and chickpeas or other beans. You can also find veggie bacon and ground beef, veggie deli slices, premade veggie burgers, meatballs, sausage patties, and even soy chicken patties and nuggets.

Honey: Maple syrup and Agave can be used usually measure for measure. There are a lot of sweetener substitutes as well. I would avoid corn based sweeteners unless they are certified organic.

Sour Cream and Yogurt: Both can be subbed with soy or coconut yogurt. There are also commercially made vegan yogurts available.